Again, belief that Christ superseded the Law, and that heavenly reality is the substance and temporal earth realities merely shadows, we all agree on. We all believe we should "set our minds on things above, and not on the earth." Our hope, Christ, is in heaven with God the Father. And it is from him we receive both our righteousness and our justification. And it is from him that we shall obtain our resurrection and immortality.
None of this means that God's Kingdom will not be applied to the earth in the eschatological Kingdom of Christ. Man was called from the beginning to subdue the earth. And the man from heaven will subdue the earth right here, where we live.
The attack on modern Premillennialism is rooted in a dualism that cuts off earthly Israel form the heavenly Church. No such dichotomy exists with either Jesus or Paul. The Kingdom of heaven will be established on the earth, remaking Israel into a Christian nation, and forcing the world to accept Christian nations.
Amils and early Chiliasts reject the apartheid/dualism you promote under the new covenant and share with the heretics. They reject your Zionism. The New Testament makes clear; there is only one elect people. There is only one good olive tree, not two; one body, not two; one bride, not two; one spiritual temple, not two; one people of God, not two; one household of faith, not two; one fold, not two; one man, not “twain,” and one elect of God throughout time.
Jesus brought a radical revolutionary message to the early Jewish disciples. He told them that there are others that are not of this flock (namely not of the Jewish race) that belong to Him, who will be integrated into His sheepfold. He was talking here of the Gentiles. What is more, He describes how these two peoples (both Jews and Gentiles) would be united together in Him and become one flock! Jesus is here acknowledging that salvation would not be limited to the Jewish race. He was predicting that the Gospel would expand out and embrace the nations. He explains that there would then be a fusion of the believing element of both ethnic groups into one cohesive believing sheepfold – with Him as a Shepherd. This indeed happened 2000 years ago.
Jesus frequently encountered the hostility of the Christ-rejecting apostate Jews many times during His earthly ministry. Many times, He presented them with the simple Gospel, and many times they rejected it. They refused to receive their own Messiah. Jesus declared to “the Jews” in John 10:26-27, after they questioned His deity, “ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
These religious zealots were not part of God’s old covenant flock. They were not true Israel. They belonged to the natural seed of Abraham, not the spiritual seed. The belief that God has one plan of salvation for the ethnic relatives of Abraham and another for the Gentile people of the world is both mistaken and in conflict with clear and repeated Scripture. There is only one life-changing Gospel, containing one set of standards and requirements – it is open equally to both Jew and Gentile.
The Lord confirms this in Matthew 22:1-14 with the parable of the wedding feast. Through the imaginary of a king and his subjects, He spoke of the invitation He extended to the Jewish people – His intended guests. He showed how “they would not come” and how they made many pitiful excuses. In fact, “they made light” of the invitation and “took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.”
The prideful rebellion of unbelieving Israel is highlighted in Christ’s lament in Matthew 23:37:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” Israel’s Messiah reached out to natural Israel, but they largely rejected Him. He spoke the truth to them and they heard but couldn’t hear. Jesus said elsewhere “thou knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19:44). What a damming indictment upon this blessed nation.
Natural Israel’s stubborn rejection of Jesus is ably summed up in John 1:11:
“He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” In fact, not only did they reject Him, they cruelly nailed Him to a tree.
Since the cross natural Israel has overwhelmingly continued to rebel against God’s gracious provision for sin, Jesus Christ. The king being angry at this “sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city” (Matthew 22:7). The Lord was here speaking of AD70 and the destruction of the Israeli nation. Having rejected his offer, the king’s servants were instructed to go “into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage” (Matthew 22:9). This was a picture of the Gospel going out to the nations – those that had previously been aliens to the favor of God and salvation. Through the Jews willful rejection of Christ, the Gentiles entered into God’s wonderful grace in their millions.
The Gospel of God would no longer be restricted to one individual earthly nation but rather to a broad spiritual nation that was birthed from above. John 1:12 goes on to declare,
“But as many as received him (both Jew and Gentile),
to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”